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Half of Students in Exploratory Study Reported Witnessing or Experiencing a Bias Incident on Campus |
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From Ascribe Newsfeed: When families weigh their choices on which college their children should attend, they tend to focus on cost, academic reputation and campus amenities. The Campus Tolerance Foundation today released analysis based on new research that calls for colleges and universities to provide more information to families about the atmosphere on campus, especially the treatment students can expect to face as members of racial, ethnic, gender or intellectual minorities. Surprisingly high numbers of students report they have either personally been victims of bias incidents or that they have seen bias incidents -- defined as graffiti, insults, physical threat or physical assault committed because of someone's group identification. And although Berkeley's (49 percent) and Columbia's (43 percent) ratings are better than MSU's (64 percent), they still indicate a widespread problem -- nearly 1 in every 2 students has witnessed or experienced bias incidents. The majority of respondents (56 percent) said that the prevalence of intolerance and disrespect toward minorities or other marginalized groups was "sporadic," while 4 percent said it was "pervasive," 15 percent said it was "somewhat common," 16 percent said it was "nonexistent," and 10 percent said they didn't know. Interestingly, 9 in 10 students who said they experienced some form of bias discrimination also said they did not report the incident to school administration or security. The vast majority of students at the universities surveyed in this online survey said that their school is open and accepting to these minority groups. The overall goal of the research project is to eventually develop a comprehensive, broadly-accepted national survey mechanism that fairly assesses the atmosphere on 200 college campuses across the nation.
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